Development and testing of a bacterial biosensor for toluene-based environmental contaminants

A bacterial biosensor for benzene, toluene and similar compounds appears to be capable of accurately measuring environmental contaminants, making it a potentially inexpensive tool for field-ready assays. A reporter plasmid was constructed by placing the luc gene for firefyl luciferase directly under the control of the P(sub u) promoter and the xylR transcriptional activator of Pseudomonas putida mt-2. The biosensor cells were shown to detect benzene, toluene and xylene contamination in soil and water samples with high sensitivity and quantitative accuracy.